


If We Ran Away To The Circus

by sergeant_angel



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Hawkeye (Comics), Young Avengers (Comics)
Genre: F/F, M/M, Other, a young avengers post-wwii au, carnie!Kate, i don't know what's happening here please join me in my confusion, i feel like the hawkeye fandom needs more circus in it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-28
Updated: 2016-12-13
Packaged: 2018-09-02 19:46:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8681071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sergeant_angel/pseuds/sergeant_angel
Summary: Peggy remembered seeing snippets of reports, bits of dossiers and snatches of radio messages. They're destructive, and strange, and they blend in a little better than a group of burly military men mowing their way through Italy. Well, they were less noticeable before they joined the circus.





	1. Chapter 1

Howard drags Peggy to a circus, of all things.

“Contacts, Peg,” he says, hand gripping her elbow tight as he pulls her towards a garishly striped tent and burned-out bulbs. “Took me a while to track ‘em down. I hope you appreciate this, Peg. Getting you more manpower.”

“Manpower I have,” Peggy allows Howard to steer her towards the bleachers.

“Nah, nah,” Howard says after buying a popcorn. “Trust me. Have I ever steered you wrong?”

“Well, actually—“

“You weren’t supposed to answer that, Pegs.”

* * *

There is the _Amazing Quicksilver_ and _The Magic Man! a_ nd _The Patriotic Strongman_ and far more two-bit performers than Peggy cares for. The whole escapade is shaping up to be one of Howard’s least impressive plans, and one that smells a great deal worse than his normal bad plans when there is a fanfare and drums and a woman swings in on the trapeze, catching the hands of the strongman, doing several daring flips through the air before landing with a thump and a small puff of white powder.

She has a thick dark braid coiled around her head and snaking around her shoulders. Her makeup is well done; she doesn’t suffer from too much or too little, neither washed out by the bright lights nor overpowered by rouge and lipstick.

Peggy wonders for a moment if she served with the USO before the woman draws an arrow from her quiver, fitting it to a bowstring. Her outfit is a rather alarming shade of purple, spangled with rhinestones or sequins, the skirt scandalously short and the top daringly low.

Peggy swallows convulsively, her eyes darting to Howard, tossing popcorn in his mouth.

“ _The Amazing Trickshot!_ ” The ringmaster introduces her, and Peggy catches the way the woman gives the slightest grimace and the way her eye twitches before she smooths any expression from her face.

The woman, Peggy must admit, _is_ amazing. Her first few shots gather nicely in the middle of the bullseye; Trickshot seems almost bored when she splits each of those arrows with another. She seems less bored when she shoots an apple from the head of _The Amazing Quicksilver,_ or when _The Patriotic Strongman_ actually tosses Trickshot into the air, and then five clay pigeons, and she shoots each one before any of them hit the ground.  

“C’mon,” Howard is up, tugging Peggy to her feet. “We gotta catch ‘em before they disappear to wherever carnies disappear to after a show.”

Peggy still isn’t sure what’s going on, or what Howard is trying to prove when she spots the retreating back of the Amazing Trickshot, and Howard yells, “Hey! Katie!”

The woman doesn’t so much as _freeze_ in her tracks as she turns; it’s a fluid motion of turn, pull, draw, so that an arrow is aimed at what Peggy assumes is Howard’s head.

“Howie,” the woman says. “You turn around and keep walking and maybe I forget to tell Eli that you’re in town.”

“Former flame, Howard?” Peggy mutters. “Honestly—“

“You can’t call me Howie,” is, of course, the thing Howard takes from the exchange.

“Then don’t call me Katie,” snaps the woman who still has an arrow aimed at them.

“What am I supposed to call you?” Howard scoffs.

The woman stares him down, head tilted to the side, before sighing with her whole body and sliding the arrow back into her quiver.

“You call me Kate, like everyone else does, Howard. Or Bishop. Or--”

“Hawkeye,” Peggy blurts, because now she knows how she knows the woman. She’d never seen a picture, only a few lines of her file, enough to know she had a team, that she’d parachuted into France, and that—“World’s Greatest Marksman. What are you doing with a circus?”

Howard gestures to Peggy, as if he’s putting her on display. “I have a job for you!”

Kate—Hawkeye—blinks, swallows hard enough that Peggy can see it. “uh, I’m not sure what you think I _do_ , Howard—“

“Oh, Jesus, Katie—not—I mean, you and your team, a job for you and your team!”

The change in Kate is immediate. Something loosens in her shoulders, sharpens in her eyes. “Target?”

“Whitney Frost.”

“Eeewh,” Kate pulls a face. “Uh. Her. Right.”

“Not just her! There’s a whole thing! With the SSR!” Another gesture to Peggy.

“Agent Carter,” Kate says, and Peggy manages to swallow air incorrectly. “Vera always spoke highly of you.”

“Vera?”

“Atkins,” Peggy informs Howard. “Of the OSS. Is the rest of your team in LA?”

“Along the coast,” Hawkeye says, a shift in her stance that Peggy reads as _I will protect them with my life_. “We stay in touch. We’re all odd, and sometimes it’s better if we’re not all odd in the same place.”

Peggy can see the lie, but leaves it be. “That seems wise. I seem to recall unsubstantiated reports of you lot being rather destructive when all together.”

Kate smiles and it changes the whole of her face, as if something missing is found. “Agent Carter,” she says, striding to Peggy, hand outstretched. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. What can the Avengers do for you?”


	2. Chapter 2

"You're alone." Stark sounds  _disappointed_ as he says it.

"Tommy can't keep secrets worth a damn and if Eli sees you he's putting you through a wall. Or maybe the ground," Kate shoves past Howie and his...his what? Butler? Tall, a little angular, something pensive in the set of his mouth.

"Hawkeye," Peggy Carter is to Kate in three long strides, hand extended and grip firm as she shakes Kate's hand. "Thank you for coming."

Carter isn't much taller than Kate is, though Kate feels like she should be by a lot; she's usually got a better memory for these things. Peggy's personality makes her seem taller, larger; her command of the room, the way her presence fills it. Kate's got a big personality, her team does as well. It's hard to interact with people who fade into the background; always makes her feel like she's going to crush them just through the force of her being.

That, or the trousers Carter's wearing make her legs seem longer. Her clothes  _are_ impeccably tailored. You can take the girl out of Manhattan, after all, but it's hard to take the Manhattan out of the girl, and Kate's always had an eye for fashion.

Or guy, she thinks, looking at Howie. He can hide behind sunglasses and short sleeves and loud prints and his devil-may-care attitude, but he's still Howie Stark, the boy she always had to dance with.

"I thought you were going to bring your team," he butts back into the conversation. "You're going to need your team--"

David clears his throat from the doorway, and Howard's eyes narrow for a moment, taking in David's height and whippet-thin build, his amber-tinted glasses perched precariously on his head.

"I've brought  _a_ member of my team," she says. "Agent Carter, Howie, this is David--"

"Alleyne!" Carter finishes. "We did explosives training together!"

"Carter!" David slips past Kate to embrace Peggy, arms going around her waist and lifting her up off the floor about a foot. "How've you been?"

"Better. Worse," she shrugs. Her smile lights up her face, dimpling her cheek and  _David has never mentioned this_. "I heard you were captured?"

"My first jump into France, Pegs. Like an arse. Hawk's lot scooped me up on one of their runs."

"Best codebreaker I've ever worked with," Kate inserts herself into the conversation.

"Better than you?" Howard challenges. It's a fair challenge.

"Better than me," Kate concedes. "Not by a lot. But better."

"I'd like that in writing, signed in triplicate later." David has his arm slung over Peggy's shoulders.

"Jarvis!" Howie finally turns to the man who has been standing silent at his elbow. "Food? D'you think Ana's done cooking?"

"I shall check," Jarvis nods to Howard, his eyes lingering on Kate. There's something familiar about him. She's unsure if it's the name, or the way he moves, or the way he purses his lips, but it tickles something in the back of her mind. The kind of thing you can't chase or risk losing it for good.

* * *

Kate had hoped Howie would have gotten over his obsession with cheese; no such luck. 

She's debating the wisdom of sitting so near the fondue pot while Peggy Carter and David wrestle in the middle of the living room when Howard throws himself in the chair next to her.

He looks like he's getting ready to say something--when Peggy pins David, when he kicks her legs out from under her, when Peggy gets David in a headlock.

"Thanks for not bringing Bradley," is what he finally says.

"I didn't do it for you." The words slice out of her mouth, tasting bitter on her tongue. "He's been doing better, less Hyde. He's better at controlling it." She grinds her teeth so hard her jaw aches, fighting the words she needs to say but doesn't think Stark deserves to hear. "I didn't bring him because I still want to be angry at you."

"You mean--he isn't--he's not--"

"He knew what the risks were. He  _trusted_ you. And, as Eli constantly reminds me, he's not dead. Or missing in action." She wants Eli to be furious with Howard, the way she is. Kate tells people Eli hates Stark, because  _she_ does, or wants to, for his recklessness, for the way he got so caught up in the big picture he lost sight of the details, of the people who he wasn't supposed to hurt. 

"That's not enough for you, though, is it, Katie?"

"I didn't bring Eli because it's not fair to put him between you and me. Not to mention, David is better at keeping secrets."

"Kate and Whitney Frost had an affair," David says into what, going by his expression, he did not expect to be clear silence.

"Oh, for God's sake," Kate throws her hands into the air as Howie cackles next to her and Peggy Carter eyes her with renewed interest, and something else that makes Kate struggle not to squirm. "Go back to England, the pair of you."

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I looked up the origins of "Alleyne" hoping it would be French, but apparently it's Celtic, so YAY! English David. (English as well as Irish? Just Irish? it's too late I need to go to bed I DON"T KNOW *quiet sobbing*)
> 
> Oh, look, surprise ships! Were you expecting them? I wasn't! Which ones? Ahahaaaaaaa oops.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what's happening here. Do you?   
> I'm sorry I know that I'm supposed to be working on Riptide but when Peggy carter gets in your brain she don't leave, friends, and it was this or really really tragic Kate/Peggy soulmate and it's the holidays I can't do tragic.


End file.
